Fear Itself: The Home Front #4(of 7):
What Happened: Speedball tries to prevent Attuma from destroying St. John's, Newfoundland(that's in Canada for those of you who suck at Geography), and succeeds... For a moment. Basically all Speedball does is MASSIVELY piss off Attuma, who floods the entire city, presumably killing thousands, as well as possibly Speedball himself. There were three other stories in this one too, but they all sucked, so I'm going to exercise my blogging right to pretend they never happened!
Thoughts: Well, it sucks that I had to pay $4 for what was basically a 14 page comic. Sure, the Speedball story was written by Christos Gage, who'd I'd easily put in my top five list of favorite current writers, but considering I didn't even read the second story(starring Jimmy Woo and the terrible Agents of Atlas), the third story was a one-pager written AND illustrated by Howard Chaykin, whose art I don't like(to put it nicely!), and the last story was about the Blue Marvel, whoever the hell THAT is, I definitely didn't have a lot to enjoy here... So while I DID enjoy the Speedball story, I have to take the other stories into account as well, thus bringing this issue's score down to a...
Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.
When in doubt, post a splash page!Avengers #15(Fear Itself tie-in):
What Happened: The Serpent possessed Hulk is wreaking havoc in Brazil, leaving Spider-Woman, Protector(can't we PLEASE just call him Marvel Boy again?), Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye to deal with him... Yeah, that'll happen. Everybody talks for hours, and the battle ends with the Avengers LITERALLY hiding from the Hulk... Yeah...
Thoughts: I don't think I'll ever understand Bendis. I mean does Avengers editor Tom Brevoort actually read the Fear Itself Avengers tie-in issues Bendis is writing, or does he just shrug his shoulders and figure, “Ah that Bendis... I know he'll do good work, no need to check to see what HE'S doing!” Because Bendis has been pumping out some of his worst work since Secret Invasion in Avengers and New Avengers since Fear Itself started, which leads me to draw a single conclusion. Bendis should be kept FAR, FAR away from crossovers. Either that or take him off of one of the Avengers titles, because this was literally unreadable. And yes, I know what the word “literally” means. I literally could NOT read this comic. I skipped several pages of useless dialogue, because it served NO purpose. Can we please get the Bendis who wrote Ultimate Fallout #1 back, because Fear Itself Bendis is frightfully terrible...
Score: 0 out of 10. Yup, for the second straight week, a comic gets the dreaded imperfect score. You know, there was a time when I went MONTHS without giving an imperfect score. How I long for those days...
It's official. Bendis is out of control again...Daredevil #1:
What Happened: Matt Murdoch has returned to Hell's Kitchen and has restarted his law firm with Foggy Nelson for the 1,987,345th time. This time though, any lawyer he goes against in court throws the fact that he is Daredevil in his face, ruining many of his cases. Besides that, he gets a tip from the new Assistant DA that one of his clients was in bigger trouble than Matt realized, and that maybe Daredevil could help the guy out. While sleuthing, DD is disoriented by a gun that specifically messes with his senses, and this issue ends with Captain America's shield hurtling towards him(!?).
Thoughts: Eh. I really have no complaints here. I trust Mark Waid as a writer implicitly, so I'm going to hold off judgment until I've read a few issues. There were a few things here that bugged me, Matt's super-chipper attitude, the fact that ONCE Matt returned to New York so did Daredevil(and Matt wonders why everybody knows he's DD...), but like I said, I'll wait a few issues before I decide to really praise or bash this series.
Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.
Real classy... Throw a pencil at a blind man...Captain America Corps #2(of 5):
What Happened: After being defeated by the Ameridroid, the Captain America Corps are captured(ROLL CALL! Steve Rogers from 1941, Bucky from before Fear Itself, American Dream from the M2 Universe, US Agent from the beginning of his days as the Agent, and Commander A from the future) and tortured by the nefarious Americommand. The Cap Corps manage to escape, free a few other “undesirables” such as Peter Parker, Luke Cage and Sam Wilson from prison, before they are taken out of that reality by the cosmic Contemplator. While the Contemplator is explaining to the Corps that the world was messed up because there was no Steve Rogers to hold the Avengers together, there seems to be some dissension in the Americommand, as two agents seemed tired of Major America's barbaric rule.
Thoughts: I know I said it before, but it bears saying again... Eh. Nothing really special here. The story was okay, although there's still a mess of things we need to find out including how the Americommand managed to take over the country, who Major America is, and how the Contemplator was going to have the Cap Corps fix things. Since it's a Captain America mini-series, and my poor, poor Bucky is in it, I'll continue reading, but here's hoping things pick up a bit next issue.
Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.
Best team EVER!!!
Lmao, I know Bendis likes to make everyone talk but I've seen full back-up stories that haven't had as many words or speech bubbles as that one page you posted!
ReplyDeleteAnd that was just ONE page!! Now just imagine an entire comic book full of pages like that, JT... Then you'll get my negativity towards Bendis's Fear Itself/Avengers work...
ReplyDeleteI can sort of agree on the daredevil issue. His attitude was a bit different but it was nice that he explained it himself in the bonus issue in the back. Plus, after everything that bendis,brubaker and diggle put him through he NEEDS a new outlook on life haha Reading the little excerpts from waid though he talked about daredevil exploring alot more, villains that he usually wouldn't fight, places he wouldn't ususally be and also trying to be a lawyer which i loved in this issue. The last exceprt from waid di say somehting like "Matt deserves a more positive outlook on life and he needs to have things go well for him, well... for now anyway" This makes me think that we are in store for some good set-up and story telling by waid (which i am a big fan of). PLUS: The captain is coming to town! that alone excites me for issue 2.
ReplyDelete-The only dialogue heavy writing of Bendis' that i enojy was his beggning run on new avengers. I can understand heavy dialogue when the art is lacking but its not!
-Captain america corp is on a make or break issue in my opinion. I will collect all 5 but 3 has to really put some meat into the story. I like the idea of all the cap's being removed from time in order to save the world, but exactly what you asked? HOW did the amercommand take control? How will cap's existence affect it? reminding me a bit of a kang story which i enojy but this one is somewhat lacking. I have a feeling ol' tath ki? or whatshisname isn't telling us the whole story.
Also, I didn't really think about it at first read but after seeing your comment on it her hitting him with a pencil is terrible haha. Maybe becaus she knows he's daredevil she thought that it would make it okay? idk
ReplyDeleteYeah, agreed with DD, Cap. I can definitely see why Waid is taking DD in a lighter direction, like you pointed out, he's been to hell and back and then BACK to hell again! It's just that he was still broody in that DD Reborn mini, which made his sudden lighthearted approach here kind of jarring. But going forward, as I get used to it, I'll be fine with DD's new attitude.
ReplyDeleteYES! Exactly! There have been some good dialogue heavy Bendis work that I've enjoyed(most of his early Ultimate Spidey run), but filling up pages and pages of basically worthless dialogue that doesn't really further anything drives me crazy! Did we really need like two to three pages of Avengers chatting about why Spider-Woman should be an Avenger! When I find myself just kind of scanning the pages and not reading the comic, that's a huge problem!
Again, agreed. That was my main problem with this issue of Capt Corps. We still don't really KNOW anything! I mean it's awesome getting early US Agent, current Bucky, American Dream and of course early Steve, but once the awesomeness of that wears off, I need some story advancement...
That pic just made me laugh! I mean what if he really ISN'T DD?! What if Matt really was a blind guy whose name had been smeared in the media?? It was just horrible(and funny) that she throws this pencil at what could be, a blind man!